Kubernetes ingress-nginx up to 1.11.4/1.12.0 auth-tls-match-cn Ingress Annotation IngressNightmare input validation

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as very critical, has been found in Kubernetes ingress-nginx up to 1.11.4/1.12.0. Affected by this issue is some unknown functionality of the component auth-tls-match-cn Ingress Annotation. The manipulation leads to input validation. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2025-1097. The attack is possible to be carried out remotely. Moreover, an exploit is present.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as very critical, has been found in Kubernetes ingress-nginx up to 1.11.4/1.12.0. This issue affects an unknown functionality of the component auth-tls-match-cn Ingress Annotation. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a input validation vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-20. The product receives input or data, but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the input has the properties that are required to process the data safely and correctly. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

A security issue was discovered in ingress-nginx https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx where the `auth-tls-match-cn` Ingress annotation can be used to inject configuration into nginx. This can lead to arbitrary code execution in the context of the ingress-nginx controller, and disclosure of Secrets accessible to the controller. (Note that in the default installation, the controller can access all Secrets cluster-wide.)

The weakness was disclosed by Hillai Ben Sasson as 131007. The advisory is shared at github.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2025-1097 since 02/07/2025. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be initiated remotely. Technical details are unknown but a public exploit is available. The price for an exploit might be around USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 02/06/2026).

The exploit is available at exploit-db.com. It is declared as proof-of-concept. The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 233357 (Ingress-NGINX controller < 1.11.5 / 1.12 < 1.12.1 Multiple Vulnerabilities), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.

The vulnerability is also documented in the databases at Exploit-DB (52475), Tenable (233357) and CERT Bund (WID-SEC-2025-0629). If you want to get the best quality for vulnerability data then you always have to consider VulDB.

Affected

• SUSE openSUSE
• IBM InfoSphere Information Server
• Open Source Kubernetes

Productinfo

Type

• Virtualization Software

Vendor

• Kubernetes

Name

• ingress-nginx

Version

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 1.2
• 1.3
• 1.4
• 1.5
• 1.6
• 1.7
• 1.8
• 1.9
• 1.10
• 1.11
• 1.11.0
• 1.11.1
• 1.11.2
• 1.11.3
• 1.11.4
• 1.12.0

License

• open-source

CPE 2.3info

• 🔍
• 🔍
• 🔍

CPE 2.2info

• 🔍
• 🔍
• 🔍

CVSSv4info

CVSSv3info

CVSSv2info

Exploitinginfo

Threat Intelligenceinfo

Countermeasuresinfo

Timelineinfo

Sourcesinfo

Entryinfo

If you want to get the best quality for vulnerability data then you always have to consider VulDB.

Discussion